A controversial excerpt leaked from a 1991 World Bank memo signed by the U.S. administration’s current chief economic advisor, Lawrence Summers, outlined the economic reasons for "encouraging more migration of dirty industries to least developed countries".
While the excerpt was rightly condemned then, and Summers distanced himself from it, if developed countries successfully subsidized an environmentally- friendly path to high income in developing countries, could reconsidering a place for pollution transfers gain any relevance?
On a recent trip to Africa, the managing director of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), Dominique Strauss-Kahn, outlined a U.S. $100 billion approach to finance a shift in developing countries towards low carbon economic growth models.
He said an IMF-designed Green Fund could be "a bridge to large-scale carbon-based financing in the medium term" and a way to break the impasse on financing a global effort to curb greenhouse gas emissions and avert a potential global catastrophe due to climate change.
Strauss-Kahn stressed in an interview with allAfrica.com that the IMF would act as a facilitator for the Green Fund and it was up to other specialized agencies to define how responding to climate change would be carried out.
The IMF, and Strauss-Kahn in particular, deserve credit for proposing an idea to quickly to start channeling resources from developed countries to low-income countries to help pay for environment-friendly economic growth.
The Green Fund is particularly welcome given the disappointing end of the December Conference of Parties (COP15) to the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change in Copenhagen, where binding commitments could not be agreed upon. The frank admission by Strauss-Kahn that climate change has had a disproportionate and earlier adverse impact on developing countries, while the responsibility for the current levels of greenhouse gases largely rests on developed countries, is also a welcome starting point.
While the move by the IMF chief is a heartening development, celebrating would be premature; too much remains uncertain. Most of the stumbling blocks are obvious: a lack of unified global political will, unclear policy guidelines and overall direction, limited technical capacity. The list goes on.
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What might not be so obvious is what happens when developing countries successfully use "green technology" grants from developed countries to leapfrog over or match their benefactors in economic development. The changes that would come with successful clean technology adoption funded by developed countries could induce new conflicts and foster new resentments.
Richer countries reached their income levels on the back of a comparatively "dirtier" growth path with its attendant lasting environmental toll. Contrasting rising income levels at little environmental cost in beneficiary countries against stagnating incomes and a legacy of poor environmental conditions in developed countries could make for a politically untenable position even if the funding succeeds in its larger goal of averting a global catastrophe.
A taxpayer in a heavily polluted city like Los Angeles might feel justified in objecting to getting penalized for belonging to a comparatively richer society while living under more polluted and inferior health conditions, especially if developing countries grow fast enough.
Proud Dzambukira follows technology for AllAfrica.
